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Our Man Bashir
' |image= |series= |production=40510-482 |producer(s)= |story= Bob Gillan |script= Ronald D. Moore |director= Winrich Kolbe |imdbref=tt0708573 |guests=Andrew J. Robinson as Garak, Kenneth Marshall as Michael Eddington, Max Grodénchik as Rom, Melissa Young as Caprice and Marci Brickhouse as Mona Luvsitt |previous_production=The Sword of Kahless |next_production=Homefront |episode=DS9 S04E09 |airdate= 27 November 1995 |previous_release=(DS9) The Sword of Kahless (Overall) Resistance |next_release=Homefront |story_date(s)=Unknown (2372) |previous_story=(DS9) The Sword of Kahless (Overall) Resistance |next_story=Homefront }} Summary As the episode begins, Bashir enjoys a holosuite adventure that casts him in the role of a flamboyant spy during the Cold War on Earth ("licensed to kill," if you get my drift). Ever since the new program arrived, Bashir has spent all his free time acting out its story line. (No doubt his valet, Miss Mona 'Wonder Bra" Luvsitt, has a tad to do with his pre-occupation.) Meanwhile, Sisko, Kira, Dax, Worf, and O'Brien return from a conference. Nearing DS9, they discover that someone has sabotaged the runabout. (It turns out to be a Cardassian group called "the True Way," but they're just a plot device to get the fun started.) Eddington, in Ops, attempts to beam the officers off the runabout. Unfortunately, the runabout explodes, leaving them stranded in the pattern buffer. With no other option, Eddington tells the computer to store the patterns in all available memory. The computer stores the officers' physical patterns in Bashir's program while saving their neural energy everywhere else. Thus begins a delightful James Bondian romp in which Bashir must keep any one from dying lest their patterns be lost. Eventually Rom manages to hotwire the Defiant 's transporters to the holosuite memory core, restoring everyone to their normal selves. Errors and Explanations Plot Oversights # Where are all those little Engineering guys we saw in Starship Down? Why aren't they helping Rom with this problem? They are probably working on other parts of the station. Equipment Oddities # O Brien and his teams must have slacked off their routine maintenance programs. In this episode Eddington tries to beam Sisko and company from an exploding runabout. Some of the energy travels back along the transporter beam and blows up the primary energizing coils. Something is very, very wrong here The crew of the Enterpnse D did this all the time (See the (NextGen) episode A Matter of Perspective for an example.) In addition, the crew of DS9 have done It several times without adverse effect. (See Past Prologue for an example ) The transporter in Ops has even managed to successfully receive a transport from another transporter even though that transporter was based on a ship and the ship had exploded into teeny- tiny bits! (See Dramatis Personae.) These are Cardassian transporters, which may be starting to wear out. # I'm sure there is some complicated technobabble reason but why didn’t Eddington just transfer the pattern buffer to the Defiant right after the coils burned out That may have required disconnection from the power supply, which would have resulted in the patterns being wiped – assuming the buffer was compatible! # Cardassian pattern buffers seem to lose their cohesion very quickly. The Tech Manual says the pattern buffers on the Enterprise can cycle their contents for almost seven minutes without degradation. (Where Scotty when you need him? See the (NextGen) episode "Relics.") Perhaps Cardassian transporters aren’t designed for that! # So, um.. Bashir shoots Garak With a holosuite-created gun, right? A gun that shoots bullets and is normally lethal but the holosuite somehow overrides this lethal component wth it’s mortality fail-safes. Wouldn't it be simpler to make the gun nonlethal in the first place and just simulate the firing of the weapon? (The (NextGen) episode 'The Big Good-bye" contains another example of this.) On the other hand, I suppose we could say that Bashir made the weapon and bullets with a replicator and brought them inside, but this seems needlessly dangerous.) The holosuite safeties may have been disabled somehow. # After Eddington and crew transfer the neural and physical patterns of Sisko and company to the Defiant, the ship's transporter puts the senior officers back together. Interestingly enough, on the holodeck we see the characters transporting out instead of just fading from view. Are the creators trying to tell us that Rom somehow figured out a way to beam physical pattems off a hologrid? Somebody should tell Moriarty about this! (In the (NextGen) episode Ship in a Bottle the fearless, "best o'their fields" crew of the Enterprise attempted this and failed.) Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Wednesday, August 09, 2000 - 10:37 pm: (Via Nit Central) I believe in Ship in a Bottle, it was holodeck created matter which could not be beamed off and reconstructed, since it had no physical pattern to begin with. Whereas in this episode, the physical patterns of the crew were stored in the holosuite until they could be retrieved. # Several nitpickers wondered why Sisko and company didn't materialize on the transporter pads wearing the clothes they wore on the holodeck. Or, if their stored physical pattern included their uniforms, why they didn't look like they had holodeck clothes on over their Starfleet uniforms! Of course, if you can actually do this—if you can actually store someone in memory and reanimate that person later—the crew of DS9 have discovered eternal life! (Just keep several copies of yourself around in case you ever get killed.) It would take up too much memory in the computer. Nit Central # Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Wednesday, August 09, 2000 - 10:37 pm: O'Brien says that there is a problem with the warp core and it won't shut off, then it is said that there has been sabotage. Hmmm, didn't the same thing happen in Little Green Men? Were the writers just lazy and decided to reuse the same problem, or does The True Way use the same saboteur as Quark's cousin Gaila? (I believe he has an ad in the 24th century Yellow Pages.) Maybe the True Way group independently selected the same method as Gaila did. # If the holosuite program has Colonel Anastasia Komananov asleep on Bashir's bed, then why didn't Mona tell Bashir that she was there? Shouldn't the valet for a spy know if someone was in the bed of her boss? Perhaps Komananov managed to get in without Mona realising. # Bashir thinks that if Dax dies then the computer will erase her pattern, but when Mona dies her body (pattern) just lies on the floor. There is no neural pattern for Mona. # For a race whose skin tends toward pale white, Garak's blood seemed awfully red. Don’t Albinos have red blood? # Callie on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 - 9:17 am: Garak barges in on Julian’s programme and says that until then nobody knew what the programme was about. So how did he arrive wearing a tux? Did the holosuite dress him according to the programme, i.e. were the clothes holographically projected on top of whatever he was wearing when he walked in? Or did he sneak in, take a look around and then nip out and replicate himself a tux before coming back in? KAM on Wednesday, April 21, 2004 - 3:09 am: Just a guess, but if Garak saw Bashir wearing a tux before going into the holosuite he might assume that he should wear a tux too. Actually while we've seen people go in & out of holosuites wearing their play clothes wouldn't some kind of adjoining changing room be more appropriate? # Russian Kira whispers “Earrings” to Julian just before they kiss but afterwards Julian says that he bought the earrings for her and he seems to imply that he knew what they were capable of. So why did ‘Kira’ need to remind him? Kinggodzillak on Thursday, July 14, 2005 - 3:19 pm: Maybe just to draw his attention to the fact that she *was* wearing them… Merat on Thursday, July 14, 2005 - 4:24 pm: Remember, this is a holodeck program created to let people pretend to be a fantastic spy. Like many games, it probably prompts the user and gives little hints. # Kinggodzillak on Friday, July 15, 2005 - 1:52 pm: I know it's a difficult area to discuss, but does anyone else think that O'Brien should be missing an eye after this ep? Falcon was...Not necessarily – in the updated version of Dangermouse, DM has an ‘iPatch’ over one of his eyes. # John A. Lang on Monday, September 12, 2005 - 7:34 am:''At the end of the episode, Garak asks Bashir if they can have dinner at Bashir's "Office in Hong Kong". It's a nice idea, but, "Hong Kong" is now under 1,000 feet of water (or more) because Bashir "destroyed the world" by using Noah's lasers to create the earthquakes. 'ccabe on Monday, September 12, 2005 - 10:05 am: I'm sure the program has a reset button. DS9 certainly does.''' Category:Episodes Category:Deep Space Nine